A video delivered by her kidnappers shows her sitting in a jungle clearing on a roughhewn bench, legs crossed, hands motionless on her right knee over shapeless dungarees. Her chestnut hair drops over a shoulder to her waist. She has been a prisoner of the FARC for nearly six years since venturing into rebel territory while campaigning for the presidency, and this is the first proof that she is alive to surface since a 2003 video.......here 
Florida, well-known for its theme parks and beaches, has another - more dubious - distinction, a tendency toward bizarre news and 2007 was no exception. There was the battle over former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith's body, the city manager who was fired after he became a she, and the love triangle involving the female astronaut who drove 1 609km, allegedly using diapers to save time, to confront a romantic rival........here
Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space will be speaking at 7:00 P.M. Friday evening, January 4th. 
Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits “tent city”, a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city centre, but in the once-booming suburbia of southern California. The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression........here
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, DEP, has identified five groups of waterbodies that are impaired and in need of water monitoring, cleanup and restoration. In the latest round of evaluating impairments in the surface waters of Florida, DEP Deputy Secretary Mimi Drew signed a final order on December 12 targeting 272 impaired waters for cleanup in the Everglades, Indian River Lagoon, Perdido, Springs Coast and Upper East Coast Basins........here
I believed that we had to stay steady and hang in there, donate to the party and vote loyally...that we would make a difference. I am trying to still trust, but it appears lately there is an agenda already pre-set that doesn't need us and in fact finds the netroots rather cumbersome to have hanging around. I hope I am wrong.......here"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
--Edmund Burke
We have just been informed by Alan's life partner, John Wilsusen, that our dear friend, Alan Wright, died early this morning at Melech Hospice in Temple Terrace. We feel blessed to have known this pure soul. Our gratitude for his friendship and tireless work for the Hillsborough River is beyond words......here, Story.....here
Police used chemical spray and stun guns Thursday on protesters who tried to force their way into a City Council meeting, the latest strife over plans to demolish some 4,500 public housing units in a redevelopment project that council members ended up unanimously supporting.......here
Top Florida officials say they treated the politically charged custody fight over a young Cuban girl like any other case, but documents obtained by The Associated Press show they took extraordinary steps to stop the youngster's father from taking her back to the communist island.........here
The Archbishop of Canterbury 
"The economy is really alarming a lot of Americans," he says, noting that people are afraid of losing their homes and their jobs. In a year-end interview with U.S. News, he added that the party of an incumbent president usually pays a severe price when the economy goes bad—and that's what will happen to the Republicans in next year's election........here
I smell a false-populist, false revolution. Recognize Ron Paul's phony rallying cry to protect the constitution as a ploy by the "Republican" party to continue their destruction our republic....... Mark Frankenberg
Gov. Charlie Crist has asked three trial lawyers to build a case for a possible class-action lawsuit against property insurers, alleging that the industry hasn't passed on savings to consumers as required by a new Florida law.......more
Little did University of Florida student Andrew Meyer know back in September that his 15 minutes of fame would live on in the pantheon of dubious utterances after he disrupted a speech by Sen. John Kerry......here
Weeks before Iowa voters trudge through the snow for the presidential caucuses on Jan. 3, thousands of Florida voters will get the first crack at casting a ballot, thanks to Florida's early-voting laws. The Republican Party traditionally has dominated the absentee voting wars, but the Democrats will compete with them this year, said state Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski. Republicans "have reached a ceiling as far as how many guaranteed early voters they've got," he said, and for Democrats, who have not, "the sky's the limit."........here
BG&E, based in Atlanta, Ga., plans to build a power plant in north or Central Florida that will use waste wood products -- such as yard trimmings, tree bark and wood knots from paper mills -- to create electricity. It would generate about 75 megawatts, or enough electricity to power 46,000 homes........here
A federal judge ordered state election officials to stop enforcing a 2-year-old voter registration law, ruling Tuesday afternoon that there is already proof that the change put in place by the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature has resulted in actual harm to real individuals.......here
Barack Obama's rise in the polls has many pundits comparing him to JFK. But maybe he's just a more charismatic Howard Dean.......here
"This party is a party that includes everybody and Guam is not going to be an exception. One of the first things I did when I was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee was make sure that territories had the same voting power as states,"............here
With a public fuming over congestion and sprawl, state planners and legislative leaders are again seeking ways to better manage Florida's growth. But unlike years past -- when politicians and planners passed tough growth laws only to water them down afterward 
